For Tuesday: Ten Things I Hate About You (1999)

NOTE: We still have a bit of the film to watch, maybe 30 minutes or so, but feel free to answer these questions before we finish...OR, you can answer them sometime after class on Tuesday. But I want to grapple with the adaptation element of the film, since eventually this aspect will become important to your writing in the class (hint, hint). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: First, the most obvious question: can Shakespeare be Shakespeare without the language? While they make a few "easter egg" attempts to preserve his language, such as when Cameron (Lucentio) says, "I burn, I pine, I perish...", most of it is completely modern. Is the plot and characters enough to perserve the tone and feel of a Shakespearean comedy? Or is this merely a comedy "inspired by" Shakespeare? Try not just to say yes or no, explain WHY you think this could still count as an adaption or not. 

Q2: How might the film explain some aspect of the play which either doesn't make sense, or isn't really explained by Shakespeare? In other words, why might this film be a 'theory' or a 'staging' of the play, which answers some of the questions left by Shakespeare for the actors and the audience?  OR, how could we take some of the ideas in this film and apply them backwards to the play? 

Q3: When Kat tells her friend (who has no real counterpart in the play) that she intends to boycott the prom because it's an antiquated mating ritual, her friend replies, "oh, so we're making a statement...oh goody, something new and different for us!" It's a funny line, but why might it also be pertinent to the play itself? 

Q4: Kat and Patrick lack a big "courting" scene like we get in Act 2 of the play, though they have several smaller ones sprinkled throughout the play. According to the film, why does she begin to fall in love with him? Is it because he's "crazy"--or willing to defy the roles of a typical lover--or is it more superficial (he learns what she likes and pretends to like them)? In other words, is their relationship closer to the play or closer to Hollywood comedies? 

Q5: Even though the play distances itself from its Shakespearean source, how does it subtly marry itself to a Shakespearean identity throughout the play? How effective are these attempts? Are they merely there for the 'insider,' or do they actually add something to the film itself? 

For Tuesday: The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 4-5

NOTE: NO QUESTIONS for Tuesday, since we'll do an in-class writing about the very end of the play--so keep reading and finish for Tuesday's class! Here are some ideas to consider that might help you...

* If Katherine and Petruchio seem to be intellectual equals in Acts 2 and 3, why does he use falcon-taming metaphors to discuss his ‘breaking of her? Couldn’t he win her by sheer love and respect at this point?

* Read Katherine’s final speech carefully, where she basically chides women for going against their husbands. What is different about her language here? Is this sincere…or is this acting? And if so, for whom?

* Is Katherine turned into Christopher Sly by the end of the play? Is that basically the entire joke of the play: that he gets to tell her who she is, and she believes it? Are we sure the lesson takes (see above question).

* Why do you think Shakespeare never returns to the world of Sly and the Induction? Wouldn’t that soften the cruel end of the play, and make it just a joke—not “real” and not the true point of the play? Or would it make the play too literal? (“all the world’s a stage,” etc.).

* Some modern version of The Taming of the Shrew have ‘solved’ the problem of Kate’s sadistic taming by switching genders: that is, a woman plays Pertruchio, and a man played Katherine. What problems might this solve for the audience? Or is this merely another case of believing too much in appearances?

For Thursday: The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 2 & 3

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How do you read the sparring match between Petruchio and Katherine in Act 2? Is it meant to be angry and threatening? Or light-hearted and flirtatious? Is he cynical, or sincerely intrigued? Is she grossly offended, or flattered? How do you “hear” this exchange? Consider lines such as, “Yet you are withered./’Tis with cares./I care not” (93).

Q2: The sisters Katherine and Bianca are clearly echoed in the later sisterly pair, Hero and Beatrice, but with a distinct difference. How do they contrast with the later pair, and what seems to be the defining nature of their relationship? Why might we also argue that as the father of two daughters, Shakespeare might have been drawing them from life?

Q3: At the end of Act 3, Gremio suggests that “Petruchio is Kated” (133). Does this mean that Petruchio is actually, against his better judgment, falling in love with her? And is she with him? Are we rooting for them to fall in love like Beatrice and Benedict? Or is this match doomed from the start (as Bianca suggests—“being mad herself, she’s madly mated”)?

Q4: Though Bianca is in the shadow of her older sister, she is hardly a push-over herself. How does she respond to the attempts of her lovers (Lucentio and Hortensio) to woo her in Act 3? Where do we hear some of Katherine’s wit, and scorn, in her replies? Why isn’t she seen as a “shrew” for turning them down?

For Tuesday: The Taming of the Shrew, Induction & Act 1

Read the first two acts (the Induction and Act 1) for Tuesday's class, and think of the world of Much Ado About Nothing as you do so. In a sense, all of Shakespeare's comedies are like reading the same play, only the characters have different names and he adds or subtracts a few of them. The landscape should be familiar, though there will be a few significant changes--mostly in the language (see below). 

The Paper #1 assignment (which I gave out in class) is in the post BELOW this one.. 

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: This might seem like an obvious question, but what is the purpose of the Induction given that the characters seem to be English (Christopher Sly, etc.) and hardly make an appearance in Act 1? How might we regard the Induction as a theory, or a lens, for interpreting the rest of the play (and esp. Act 1)?

Q2: Do the characters in The Taming of the Shrew speak more in prose or verse? How does this affect how we ‘hear’ the characters or read the play? Does it make the play more or less comic? On the other hand, are there characters who only speak prose in the play? Why might this be?

Q3: To prepare you for your Paper #1, what moments of déjà vu do you experience when reading this play after Much Ado About Nothing? Where do we see Shakespeare using the same comic building blocks in his writing, or using some of the same characters and speeches (since he wrote for largely the same actors in play after play)? For fun, where we might we see one of the actors in Much Ado in this play?

Q4: In Wells’ William Shakespeare, he explains that many people had trouble accepting that the great William Shakespeare could have been born a lowly nobody from Stratford. How could such a person write the great plays of Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello? However, why might we argue that such a person is the ideal candidate for writing plays like The Taming of the Shrew? What could someone from small-town England be able to see and understand (as evidenced in this play) more than an Oxford-educated Londoner?

Paper #1 assignment and Revised Course Schedule

English 3213: Shakespeare

Paper #1: Shakespeare’s Secret Sauce

INTRO: In Wells’ William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, he notes that notonly did Shakespeare obsess over comedy for most of his career, but “it is typical of Shakespeare that he broadens [a comedy’s] emotional range by enclosing the farcical action with a serious framework” (71). These moments are almost part of Shakespeare’s comedic DNA, and you can find them in virtually every Shakespearean comedy. It’s fascinating to try to isolate these recurring themes, since this tell us not only how he wrote his plays, but what motivated him to do so. As a playwright, what did he find funny, compelling, disturbing, perplexing, and most of all, human? And how did he define a ‘comedy’?

PROMPT: For your first paper, I want you to discuss ONE specific element of Shakespeare’s comedy that repeats almost verbatim from Much Ado to The Shrew. You might call this variations on a theme, since it doesn’t have to presented in exactly the same way, but it should be the same ‘theme,’ meaning that if you put them side by side, you would go, “oh yeah, there it is again.” So the question is why does he repeat this element, and how does he change/adapt it from one play to the next? Can we tell that one version is earlier and one later? Does the language change? The types of characters? The dramatic situation? And most of all, does he make it a joke…or does he veer away from comedy altogether?

Some themes/elements you might consider are:

• Language—specific speeches, exchanges, jokes/puns, etc.
• Characters—stock types (the naïve lover, the feuding couple, the scheming villain, the saucy servant, the bumbling official, etc.)
• Scenes—specific interactions, comic confusions, pranks at other characters’ expense, etc.
• Genre—moments when we enter a different kind of play (tragedy, farce, etc.)
• Songs—the way he incorporates music/poetry from outside the play
• Meta moments—where he seems to be winking at the audience, showing his awareness of being an actor/playwright/poet
• Others…?

NOTE: Try to make it more than a compare/contrast essay. Look at it more as figuring out why he chose to repeat this element, what it reveals about his comedy, and how he might have expanded it from one play to the next (especially as he matured as an artist).

REQUIREMENTS

• Page limit optional, but we both know when you haven’t put in enough work!
• QUOTE from each play and examine the quotes—or as we say in English, “close reading.” Don’t just summarize what you see, SHOW us.
• Introduce quotations with the Act and Scene like so “Act 2.3,” etc., and cite the page number from your edition.
• DUE IN TWO WEEKS: Thursday, October 3^rd by 5pm

REVISED COURSE SCHEDULE

T 24     Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Induction-Act 1

R 26    The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 2-3 (ALSO: Originals Reading @ 3:30)

 

OCTOBER

T 1       Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 4-5

R 3      Ten Things I Hate About You; Paper #1 due by 5pm

 

T 8       Ten Things continued

R 10    FALL BREAK

 

T 15     Film: Macbeth adaptation (TBA)

R 17    Film Continued & Wells, William Shakespeare, Chapter 6

 

T 22     Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acts 1-2

R 24    Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acts 3-4

 

T 29     Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5  

R 31    Film: A Thousand Acres (1997)

 

NOVEMBER

T 5       Film Continued / Paper #2 due by 5pm

R 7      Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1

 

T 12     Shakespeare, King Lear, Acts 2-3

R 14    Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4-5

 

T 19     Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts 1-2

R 21    Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts 3-5

 

T 26     Paper #3 due by 5pm (no class)

R 28    THANKSGIVING BREAK

 

DECEMBER

T 3       Wells, William Shakespeare, Chapter 8 & Epilogue

R 5      Adaptation Discussions/Wrap Up

 

FINAL EXAM PRESENTATIONS: TBA

For Thursday: William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5, "Shakespeare and Comic Form"

For Thursday's class, read Chapter 5 from the William Shakespeare book, and we'll continue our discussion about Shakespeare's background by discussing his comedies. What did he understand a 'comedy' was, and what makes his comedies all a generic unit, like his tragedies, or histories? NO QUESTIONS to respond to, though we'll have an in-class writing over it on Thursday which will feed into your Paper #1 assignment (which I'll always hand out).

However, here are some ideas to consider as you read...

* Shakespeare wrote basically four types of plays: comedies, tragedies, histories, and what we call 'romances,' which combine the first two categories. What does it say about him that at least half of his entire output was comedy? Why might he have prefered this genre to any of the others, considering he kept going back to it, even at the end of his career?

* Of all Shakespeare's plays, the comedies are often the most derivative (or borrowed, that is), as almost all the plots come from other plays, books, and poems. Why do you think Shakespeare preferred his comedies to be so second-hand? Is this still true of comedies today? Are most of them 'reboots'?

* What consistent themes, characters, or situtations seem to crop up most often in his comedies, according to Wells' summary of them? Why might these have particularly interested Shakespeare?

* Why does Shakespeare always set his plays in far-off locales when they could have just as easily taken place in England (and indeed, many of them reference English places and some characters have English names)? What might this have allowed him to do under the guise of "comedy"? 

* How do Shakespeare's later comedies differ from his earlier ones? What might have accounted for this biographically? Artistically?

* Why might have Shakespeare gravitated more and more towards prose by the middle of his career (around the time of Much Ado)? 

For Tuesday: Wells, William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chapters 1-2

At long last, we're going to read from our companion text, William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, by the renowed Shakespeare author and scholar, Stanley Wells. The book offers a short examination of his life, culture, and work to piece together how one man managed to write some of the most celebrated plays (and indeed, works of literature) ever written. Much of this book might surprise you by challenging long-held rumors and revealing some strange and interesting truths about his life and works. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What exactly makes Shakespeare's early life (that is, before he came to London and became a playwright) so mysterious? Why might some of these details seem unlikely as the backdrop for the future great dramatist/poet? And why might some people use it as evidence that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him (at least, not without help)?

Q2: Earlier in the class, we looked at four alleged portraits of Shakespeare, all of which capture some aspect of the Shakespeare myth (even if none are authentic). However, why might some of what we DO know about his life--especially in older age, after he retired from the stage, not square with the myth of his works and that of an inspired artist? Why might we also point to this portrait and say, "that's not the guy who wrote Hamlet!" 

Q3: When Shakespeare is taught to high school students, he seems to come out of thin air, as if no one existed before him to offer him guidance. According to the book, where DID Shakespeare, the artist, come from? Who were his heroes? Who inspired him? What did he learn from? And why might we argue that Shakespeare was just as good at adapting literaure as writing it himself?

Q4: What reality of theater or acting in Shakespeare's day might surprise us, according to the book? How might it change the way Shakespeare's drama was seen or experienced? Why don't we experience like that today? Would it still be entertaining? 

For Thursday: Much Ado About Nothing, Acts 3-5

For Thursday, try to finish the play, since after Act 3, Acts 4 and 5 are quite short. No questions this time, but we'll have an in-class response question when you get to class. However, here are some ideas to consider as you read (you do NOT have to answer these--they're just thought-provoking): 

* Consider how love is almost always a form of manipulation in this play. Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio to woo Hero; everyone lies to Benedick and Beatrice to get them to fall in love; and even Don John manipulates Claudio OUT of love with his lies. What might this say about the nature of love in this play? Is anyone in love of their own free will? Or is it always a "trap," as Hero suggests in Act 3?

* There is much more verse in the play in Acts 3 & 4: Hero and Ursula speak verse throughout their trick to Beatrice, and Claudio speaks it throughout the entire wedding scene, as does Don Pedro and Leonto. Why is this? Why might verse be more appropriate/effective than prose? What should it 'sound' like?

* As this is a play all about acting, it's also a play about seeing--or the inability to see. At one point, Claudio says, "You seem to me as Dian in her orb...But you are more intemperate in your blood/Than Venus" (127). In other words, you are not the woman I see (Diana--the virgin huntress) but the woman I've been told to see Venus (the goddess of erotic love). Why don't most characters trust appearances in this play? And which ones do? What is this even more interesting for the audience, since we 'see' everything?

* Why do you think Dogberry only appears in Act 3, almost at the end of the play? Indeed, he almost seems like an afterthought, but a very good one. Why do you think Shakespeare added him into the mix? 

* Why is it significant that Benedick never speaks verse in the entire play, and when he tries to write a poem, it's really awful? Does this suggest he cannot love sincerely? Is it all a sort of act to him? OR, is poetry itself a kind of act that can be more false than true?

* Why do Beatrice and Benedick almost fall out of love at the end of the play? Why might this very misunderstanding explain the nature of their conflict in Act 1? Might this have happened before?

* Why does Don John just disappear from the play after Act 4, and when he is finally mentioned again, Benedick merely says, "Think not on him till tomorrow"? Is it clumsy of Shakespeare to use him as a mere plot device and then discard him? 

* And related to the above, in a sense, is Don Pedro just as bad as Don John (they are brothers, after all)? Or to put this in another light, is Don Pedro just better intentioned than Don John? Do they basically do the same things to the same people, just with slightly different results? And is Don Pedro secretly a bit malicious himself? 

For Tuesday: Much Ado About Nothing, Acts 1-2

For Tuesday's class, read Acts 1 and 2 of Much Ado, which hopefully will seem very familiar to you after the film. But I hope you also notice a lot of lines, passages, and even characters that escaped your notice in the film (especially, since some of them were cut). Keep thinking about why the film made the choices it did, and if you feel the adaptation best served your sense of the text--its comedy, its poetry, and its humanity. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How does the play suggest that Beatrice and Benedict have a back story, as the film suggested they did in the opening scene (where he sneaks out the 'next morning')? Do they both feel the same way about each other? How do their lines hint at this secret (and possibly very powerful) relationship?

Q2: What characters speak most often in verse, even though most of the play is spoken in prose? (and every character speaks prose--no one exclusively speaks verse). Why might Shakespeare shift gears in certain scenes, and what would the verse help us 'hear' in the characters' ideas/sentiments? NOTE: if you're having trouble seeing the difference, remember that verse looks different on the page. After 10 syllables, it goes to the next line; prose goes on until the end of the page.

Q3: There are a LOT of characters in this play, even though the play really centers around four: Beatrice, Benedick, Don Pedro, and Claudio. So what do you make of the subplot of Don John and his scheming? Why does he hate everyone else in the play, and what is the end goal of his mischief? In other words, what is he doing in a comedy that is "much ado about nothing"?

Q4: Comedy is much harder to understand, generally, than tragedy, since it's much more topical. A lot of the references are lost, and the wit/humor dated. Find a passage in the first two acts that you DO NOT understand, and try to explain what doesn't make sense about it. Do the footnotes help explain the meaning? And once you get the general meaning, does it become funny? Why or why not? 

Q3: 

For Thursday: Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

NOTE: Even though we’ll finish the film on Thursday, we’ll watch the largest part of it in class on Tuesday, so you can easily answer these questions for Thursday’s class. We’ll discuss them a bit after the film as well.

ALSO, if you missed class, come on Thursday and you can see enough of the film to answer the questions below.  

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Though this version is utterly faithful to Shakespeare’s text, it makes a number of modern adaptations, some of which are quite unusual. Explain why you think they decided to do ONE or ALL of the following: (a) the modern, Hollywood setting; (b) black and white cinematography; (c) the low-budget, almost documentary feel; (d) all American actors—not a British accent in sight!

Q2: How do the film/actors help sell the comedy of Shakespeare’s play? In other words, what meta-textual elements do they bring out to help us see, understand, or expand the lines? Also, what made you laugh that wasn’t technically in the play? Do you think this is necessary to make the comedy work, or was it just a bonus?

Q3: What scene or moment in the film did you feel resisted translation the most? In other words, how might the modern setting and the non-Shakespearean actors have almost gotten in the way of understanding? Also, how might a more traditional approach make sense of this scene (or maybe, why might reading the play be an advantage)?

Q4: Which actor or actors do you feel most embodied their character, and helped us see them as a real person, and not just a handful of lines? What did they do that will help you ‘see’ this character when you read the play itself? Be as specific as possible 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to ECU's Fall 2024 seminar on Shakespeare! This course will explore why Shakespeare continues to be the most-performed dramatist worldwide (even in languages other than English!), and why, like Jane Austen’s novels, you can change almost everything in the text and the play will usually survive intact. To understand this, we will attempt to uncover the unique DNA of Shakespeare’s writing, by examining five key texts (both comedies and tragedies) and some of their big-screen adaptations. Ultimately, I want to discover what is more important for Shakespeare: the story or the words? The setting or the characters? His time or our own? As Stanley Wells suggests in the quote above, Shakespeare seems to have done more than write plays; he created a mythology of language and character. So why do we still believe in his work, even if most people don’t particularly know or like it? Why does Shakespeare still haunt our 21^st century American lives?

Make sure to buy a copy of the five plays we're reading in class (any edition, though Folger is the most helpful IMHO): The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. We'll also be reading a supplementary text, Wells' William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, which will help us contextualize where these plays came from, and whether or not they are still tied to their distinct moment in the past. The bookstore is currently out of this latter text, but assures me that new copies will arrive this week. Stay tuned! 

NOTE: The posts below this one are from previous semesters, and though they won't reflect the work we're doing this semester, feel free to browse!